


from acorn to oak to stave

by pressforward



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Second Person, i really did think it was a good idea at the time, my spooky girl deserves the world but instead she has this trash-heap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 16:48:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressforward/pseuds/pressforward
Summary: In the ruins of Kirkwall, Merrill makes do.





	from acorn to oak to stave

**Author's Note:**

> Older writing from 2016. Originally planned as part of a series with spotlights on every companion

Kirkwall in ruins is no less breathtaking than Kirkwall as it was. That’s what you think, anyway. More of an adventure, certainly, with the blocked alleys and cobblestones all cracked and half the walls bruised and broken. The rebuilding efforts are moving too slowly for Varric’s liking, if his complaints at your old table in the Hanged Man are anything to go by, when you actually get to hear them. You don’t meet there as often anymore. Something about the table seeming a little too large now.

You try not to mind. Same way you only listen with half an ear to Varric’s new stories about his meetings, meetings, meetings. He says it that many times, hands grappling with the air in front of him. If so many homes hadn’t suffered damage, you don’t believe you would mind so much. The city is a wasteland: filled with possibilities. Perhaps they threaten to overwhelm you, but you have never made the mistake of underestimating a threat.

So you cast yourself adrift in it instead. Like a rock skipped out into a lake, or an empty bottle in the harbor, or a net. You explore the new alleys, peer through holes in the walls, climb over makeshift barricades, and it’s been a long time since you felt so at home. Small green things are already at work in the wreckage and you bring them water when their leaves begin to look a bit yellow.

You’ve only been a few weeks back before your feet carry you west, past Hawke’s house and even Fenris’s. It feels a bit like the path that always led you to the Chantry’s linen closet, though you’re certain that no longer exists anymore. You slip through the gates of the Gallows, and try to avoid the worst of the cracks.

Aveline is sighing and cursing when you come across her, rooting angrily through the remains. For what, you’re not sure, but she kicks a piece of a twisted and broken statue, which doesn’t really seem to be what she wanted to do. You can sympathize. It didn’t look pleasant at all. You touch her shoulder gently.

“What are you looking for?”

“Don’t you have anything better to do,” she demands after flinching. She never was very observant, and your feet are very quiet on the ground. You look at her, considering, then look at the statues, their poor worn bodies that were already broken before they came to life. There are no templars in sight, but the ones you have seen since returning have not quite met your eyes. They’re up to something, and while you don’t know what, you know it distracts them and that’s enough for you. You’ve dealt with worse by now, anyway.

You consider the statues again and make your decision.

“This is my better thing,” you tell Aveline. She looks at your face, then the staff in your hand, and sighs. She stands for a moment rubbing her forehead, staring at the statues, still here all this time.

“Very well,” she says finally. “I’ll go speak to the guard.”

As though they would have stopped you. You wave good-bye as she walks away, then spend the rest of the day smashing apart those horrible statues and walking them out to the ocean. You use a handy little trick Hawke taught you to throw them in the water. When you approach the limits of your magic, you use the last dregs of it to break them even smaller, then put your staff aside and haul.

When she returns from rerouting the guard, Aveline helps you carry those pieces down herself. By the end, both of you are sweating and sticky and exhausted, hands slipping on a last bit of metal something, nothing recognizable. Maybe a liver, from the inside of a statue where no one can really see. Maybe a heart. You heave it into the water and watch it disappear, hopefully forever. Aveline is still for a moment, just breathing, then straightens with a groan. 

“Well, Merrill,” she says, “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

It’s odd, a bit, that she should think that, after all that you’ve done together. You decide not to look at her, stare out at the horizon towards the setting sun until your eyes water. You remember Fenris, and his sister, and that poor mage boy nearly sold away, and Orana, and all the missing faces from your alienage.

“Many of those slaves were elves,” you say, and you blink.

Aveline breathes in sharply, once, but does not say anything. That makes sense to you, as there’s really nothing more to say on the matter. Whoever inspired those statues, by now, they’re dead and you’re not. Nothing less, and nothing more.

So you turn your back on the water and pat her on the arm and say, “What should we get for supper?”

She catches herself before she startles again, but she looks at you with a familiar doubt in her eyes. It lingers there through dinner. It is not yet gone when you say your goodbyes. You do not believe yourself deceptive, but there are many who have been surprised by you.

Which is a bit silly, really. You’ve never tried to hide what or who you are. 

Maybe, just maybe she has deceived herself by looking too hard at the scattered pieces of you, instead of the whole. It’s a common mistake, looking at a small piece of a thing, and assuming that’s all there is. Like a tiny seed caught between your toes. Like a small and broken piece of something much, much bigger.

You’re fine with that.

So like a seed, you bury yourself in the earth and wait. You keep yourself open, you pull in all you need from the dark, quiet places of the city: the lost, the forsaken, the hunted. They’re like you, a little, in the ways that count. Also adrift, but without the intent.

You pull them in greedily, each lost little thread, and you try to knot them all together, and you cast them out again. You don’t know for what purpose, aside from simply being, and you don’t know the final shape, but nets can have many different uses. The elves in the alienage speak willingly to you now, perhaps because they have no one else. You forget names sometimes, but you never forget a story. That’s what you really have to remember, anyway, if you want to have even half a chance at protecting them.

It is a Keeper’s job, after all. The remembering and the protecting both. You’ve always known that. But the how and why have always been yours to decide. Sometimes, you touch Marethari’s staff where it hangs above your mantel, the smooth places her hands shaped, each decision she made. When you walk into the city, though, you pick up your own, your favorite, the one you looted with Hawke far, far down the coast. Pirates always had the best booty; Isabela said so, too.

You sling it across your back, settle the old familiar weight. For a moment, you think, your blurred reflection in the eluvian moves strangely, but when you turn to look, it sits inert as it always has, still sleeping. Gently, you stroke the surface, then stride out the door and immerse yourself in the city.

You wind through the streets, and you start forgetting what it means to be lost, because you are where you were always meant to be: here, _here, **here.**_

Something inside you cracks and unfurls and begins to reach. And so again, you stretch up to the sun.


End file.
